I began toying with Ubuntu Linux 5.1 Live on my Compaq Armada M300 laptop. The problem is that when Ubuntu finishes its boot process and makes its cute little musical chime, all I’m left with is a strange, blank-white screen. I can force the screen to dissipate with a [CTRL]+[ALT]+[BACKSPACE] command, but I’m then presented with a text readout of the boot process that ends with this phrase:
xscreensaver-command: no screensaver is running on display :0.0
Now, when I try to [CTRL]+[ALT]+[BACKSPACE] earlier in the boot process, I get the same result for about one second, then the white screen reappears. Once I’m on the text screen, I can type anything I want, to no effect. No commands are effective, not even a simple clear command. All I can do from this position is [CTRL]+[ALT]+[DEL], which prompts a new series of declarations that ends with instructions to remove the live disk (the drive tray then pops open) and press enter. The machine then reboots as normal.
The last declaration before the boot process hangs and I can clear the white screen is this phrase:
* Checking battery state…
This is a hand-me-down laptop with an almost certainly useless battery, so I’m wondering if the bootstrap process is searching for some kind of hardware feedback from the battery, is unable to find it, and thus simply hangs during boot. If so, what boot parameter do I need to input to prevent this from happening? If it isn’t the battery, what is the likely cause, and again, what boot parameters will solve it?